Arrival and Overview

The three of us arrived at the airport in Port au Prince in mid afternoon on Tuesday, May 25th. We were immediately confronted with the situation at hand as we were driven through the city to Carrfour. You first see people everywhere, trying to sell clothing, fruits, etc., anything to make some money to get by. Things do not seem to have improved much since the disaster. There is still rubble everywhere of countless collapsed buildings. You see five story buildings pancaked together, now the height of a one story building. There are many of these cases, in which they have been able to even remove the bodies from the mess. Many of the buildings that are still standing are structurally unsound with large cracks and must also be taken down and cleared away before reconstruction can begin. Roads are difficult to travel on as they are covered in rubble or have been damaged themselves from the earthquake. We have seen only a couple of trucks working to clear the rubble in the time since our arrival.

Mass camps scatter the hillsides of Port au Prince where large portions of the population remain until progress is made in rebuilding process. After talking with the people it became apparent that some remain in the camps even if their house was not destroyed. They saw what it could do and no longer feel safe in their homes. Mental health has become a huge problem among these people after watching everything crumble before their eyes and taking with it many if not all of their family members and friends. Garbage litters the camps, streets, and waterways. There are too many people with no infrastructure set up to deal with it. These people are faced with crowded, unsanitary, unsafe conditions. Conditions remain the same throughout most of the city, but some areas are worse off than others. People have been displaced, some of them forgotten about. Many do not have access to food or any form of health care.

People appear to want to move on, or at least try. But it is difficult in a country where nothing seems to work as it should and with such devastation weighing so heavily on the shoulders of the people. There is much work to be done in this area before life can even begin to return to something similar to normal for the Haitian people.